Nicolas Achten
(c) Fille Roelants
Giulio Caccini is not the best-known figure of his time. What led you to devote this double disc to him?
Like many singers, I discovered Giulio Caccini through his Amarilli, mia bella, found in one of the volumes of the Arie Antiche. I must have been 12, and it was love at first sight. I became interested in his work, and discovered his Nuove Musiche, his Euridice (which we recorded in 2008)… Caccini’s music has been with me as a musician and with the ensemble since its inception. I’ve also undertaken a certain amount of research into the Florentine world around 1600, and as one of its leading figures, Caccini comes back to me with a certain recurrence.
What are Caccini’s stylistic features? How does he fit in with the music of its time?
Caccini played a decisive role in the birth of the madrigal for solo voice and basso continuo. He was a member of the Camerata Bardi, which brought together the leading humanists of Florence in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. Inspired by the practices of antiquity, this Camerata placed the text above the music, and both singing and accompaniment served to express the words. Caccini’s music seeks to respond to these ideals in the best possible way: music for solo voice in which the vocal line seeks to match the declamation and rhetorical inflections of the text, both rhythmically and in terms of pitch. Ornamentation also plays an important role (the vanity of the virtuoso singers of the time?), but even this ornamentation is always at the service of the text: it must be limited to the sublimation of the emotion of a word and of the syllable that is its tonic accent. On the one hand, he wrote madrigals, generally very acrobatic, and on the other hand, ‘canzonette a ballo’ (song to dance), and Caccini describes this process quite well in his prefaces, which can be considered the first treatise on singing in modern times. It’s quite rare for us musicians to have so much direct instruction from a composer of his time. To approach his music in the light of his instructions is therefore extremely inspiring.
This double album also features works by his two daughters, Francesca and Settimia, as music was a family affair in the Caccini family. Can you tell us about these personalities?
Giulio Caccini was known for his teaching skills. He was the teacher of important artists of the time. I’m thinking of Francesco Rasi, who sang the title role in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, or Caterina Martinelli, who, had she not died at the age of 18, would have sung the title role in his Arianna. In fact, it was Monteverdi who introduced her to Caccini. But of course Giulio taught his daughters and son his art, and together with his wife they formed the Concerto Caccini, which performed at the French court at the invitation of Marie de Médicis. Francesca was a particular sensation, and King Henry IV tried in vain to keep her in his service. Both Francesca and Settimia established themselves as worthy heirs to their father. They toured many of Italy’s cities, and both earned handsome salaries. Settimia was even the highest paid singer in the Italian peninsula at the time, but her obviously strong character brought her into conflict with her employers on more than one occasion. Both sisters also distinguished themselves as brilliant composers (Florence was apparently more open to the role of women on stage and at the pen than elsewhere). Francesca published an opera (the first written by a woman) and a collection of madrigals and sacred arias. A dozen of Settimia’s madrigals have survived in manuscript form. The music of both is well worth the detour, and one senses strong personalities characterized by great inventiveness and sensitivity.
Nicolas Achten
(c) Fille Roelants
One of the main forces of this recording is to show the evolution of a basso continuo instrumentarium around 1600, and you have thus brought together some thirty instruments. How did you select these instruments? How do you manage to convey these evolutions in this recording?
The birth of the new style created new needs: support for the voice with instruments that could sum up the polyphonic accompaniment that the composer no longer had to write down explicitly. This meant, of course, the basso continuo. The instruments had to optimize their acoustic efficiency and their low register. A first generation of basso continuo instruments was thus created, based on the instruments available at the time: lutes, double harp, harpsichord and organ, etc., but there were two major inventions. The chitarrone or tiorba (a very large double bass lute, tuned as high as possible to combine the brilliance of the fine strings with a very large resonance chamber; at that time there was no second neck for the basses) and the lirone (a large viola da gamba with more or less 13 strings, whose flattened bridge made it possible to play chords). In the first decade of the 17th century, a second generation of instruments evolved into the versions we know today: the theorbo, with an extended neck for basses up to 1m80, and the triple harp, which is much larger, louder and more resonant. Each of our two discs presents a different variation of the basso continuo. It’s been an exciting adventure for us, and experiencing these evolutions under our fingers has been extremely inspiring. For the curious, we have developed a website dedicated to the disc: each instrument is presented one by one (photo, dimensions, open strings, etc.), and it is possible to hear the same musical phrase played by each instrument separately: https://www.scherzimusicali.be/cd/RIC463
Scherzi Musicali
Founded 15 years ago, Scherzi Musicali, your ensemble, has rapidly established itself as one of Belgium’s leading ensembles. Each of its projects and recordings are benchmarks. How would you sum up this formidable career?
I’ve been very lucky. I often came up with projects that couldn’t be sold, with music that didn’t seem to interest many people, and with a musicological research dimension that was a bit fundamentalist, which didn’t always make things easy. But idealists like Jérôme Lejeune (Ricercar/Outhere) or Manuel Couvreur and the team of Musique en Wallonie put their trust in me. The same goes for organizers who take risks in terms of repertoire but fill their halls, for example with Joseph-Hector Fiocco (even abroad!). I’ve always attached great importance to promoting local artists, both in terms of repertoire and performers. Since I’m also fortunate enough to teach (and enjoy it), I’m regularly able to integrate former students into the team and build long-term collaborations with them. In fact, I’m very grateful for the trust my team places in my exploration of repertoire and the research process.
